Doughnuts and a vitamin D deficiency

We've been back from our mind-blowing, bum-numbing Easter driving holiday for a week now and already it feels like forever ago. It was an incredibly memorable week, for all the right kinds of reasons this time, and I'll get to a succinct digestion of all that we saw this weekend with any luck. But for now though, I want to talk about doughnuts and other things that start with D.

Driving into Snowdonia National Park

Redefining memorable.

So. Mexico.

I don’t really know where to start. We’ve been back for a couple of weeks now – in fact it’s fucking February already – and I still haven’t quite got my perspective right on the whole thing.

Did I love Mexico? So very much. Hospitable people, gorgeous weather and the kind of beaches that knock the air from your lungs with their almost hysterical beauty.

Our hotel was the stuff of dreams – sea views, a large, languorous bed replete with princess mosquito nets, an authentic ocean soundtrack and an unpretentious, respectful architecture that nestled into the surrounds.

Was it the holiday we’d dreamed of? The holiday I’d spent months planning and even longer mentally packing for? In a word, no.

Girls gone mild in Cornwall

Such is the life of a jetsetter - we're just back from four days in Istanbul but that blog post will have to wait - because four days before that I went to Cornwall. And first thing's first.

Tor and I had been talking about a girls weekend for months - one that would conveniently coincide with beery weekends away for the other halves. And besides, we figured, all four of us have been to Cornwall before so the guilt about going again was basically negligible. And I mean really, what self-regarding boy wants to spend a weekend in bucolic surrounds by the ocean eating great food with a library of tabloids to read, pink wine to drink, gossip to extol and an idyllic eco spa to exploit?

Watergate Bay, Cornwall

A little bit of lately

At the time of writing I’m en route to Kassel, Germany to see Documenta 13 – globetrotting art dilettante that I am – but even with a dedicated couple of hours to give here I’m slightly overwhelmed as to where to start on what is effectively a “Life Lately” catch up. Or really, a life lately, and life not so lately catch up.

The last nearly two months have been frantic. I do remember the last time I was this overwhelmed with exhaustion and adrenaline and it was pretty ugly then but that feels like a warm up compared to this recent marathon of sleep-deprived madness. 

Jumping on Jeremy

This is a cheat post. One of those posts where you stick up a bunch of images in lieu of substantive or witty writing to tell yourself you updated the blog. Tick.

I am writing. Just elsewhere. A book. I'm nearly done. I promise.

In the meantime, distract yourself with pictures of our visit to Burgess Park, Peckham two weekends ago to jump on Jeremy Deller, or rather, Jeremy Deller's brilliant, bouncing Stonehenge spectacle, Sacrilege. The title says it all really.

Things I Want To Do When...

Am busy. Stupidly busy. Swigging diet coke at 3am busy. It's awful. I look awful. But soon - soon - it will be finished and normal transmission will resume.

Then I Will...

Three whole years

Yesterday was my three year anniversary with London. It snuck up on me. If I'd known I would have put a little oomph into it. As it was I spent the day - the rainy, windy, not really very warm day - trailing up and down Oxford Street with my Lovely Boy looking for suits and wondering where our joie de vivre had gone. Even a lunch date in the Food Hall at Selfridges couldn't improve the situation. We're both tired, we're both long overdue for a holiday and we have three house guests at the moment, one of whom is an adorable baby with fangs of snot and an impressive lung capacity that's been getting a workout at regular intervals throughout the night. To say it's not terribly romantic would be underselling the situation somewhat.

To be fair, the night before we did go for a date, 'dinner and a movie' style and had an equally lovely lunch with baby and daddy at the Union Market at Fulham Broadway in a rare afternoon of sunshine. But it's all a bit beige down this here struggle strasse lately.

The weekend before last though I took Lovely Boy to the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm to see Ron Arad's Curtain Call, a 360 degree art/video/sound installation made of 18,000 silicon rods that parted like an old school fly screen to let you into its belly where you could then sit on the floor and watch the animations Arad had commissioned from his friends, including David Shrigley and Mat Collishaw.

Lovely Boy dragged his feet getting there - I had to bribe him with Peking duck pancakes on Wardour Street first, but even he had to concede that it was not in fact the affectation he predicted it would be. In fact, he loved it. And so did I.

We could have sat in there for hours and just let the sound and images absorb us but little sister Sophie was in town and so we went for dinner instead. It was a good day. A new winter coat in the morning (did I mention that bit?...) some duck pancakes in the afternoon with a chaser of art and then dinner with a sibling. A Good Day.

This weekend just gone lacked that kind of certainty but hopefully the week will bring something special. I'm not sure what yet but I'm hopeful. The only way I managed Monday was to book our January trip to Thailand and a wash and blow dry for Friday morning before we head to wedding number three.

I can't even begin to contemplate my fourth year in London. I don't know how long I thought I'd be here for but I don't think I thought it would be for this long. It's funny where life sends you sometimes. I'm certainly not unhappy in London but every day is a conscious choice to be here, at least while I have this job and the promise of travel next year with my Lovely Boy, but the minute I stop choosing my choice we're outta here. But give me a holiday, a cocktail and a decent night's sleep and I may yet change my mind.

A bittersweet birthday

It's been a tiring week. 

Where my tears have stopped the rain has begun in earnest. No, not bad poetry or heavy-handed metaphor but literal, pouring, sobbing rain. It's been fitting if not a little obvious but the melancholy weather has suited my sentiment the last few days as I've slept, pondered, remembered and grappled with the complete sense of unreal that her passing has brought. I can't bring myself to say the D word because I can feel her still here - in the sense that I remember her touch, see her in my Mum, know what she would say and continue to receive emails and cards from people who met her and loved her. I just still can't quite believe she's gone. Perhaps if I'd been at home it would seem more real but for now it just feels strange. 

Hyde Park Corner between showers and after dinner.

And so my birthday on Thursday was bittersweet. LB made the day very special with thoughtful presents and cupcakes and dinner at our favourite Spanish restaurant and a haircut and pedicure improved, if not brightened, the day also. 

On Friday I had lunch at Hix in Selfridges with my lovely, dear friend before we amused ourselves with the cosmetics counter and a spin through Gray's Antique Market in search of wedding accessories. The inscribed dessert at lunch was another small, special moment. Last Friday LB, Tor, The Hungry One and I went for dinner at The Corner Room in Bethnal Green - a joint birthday dinner - that was delicious, delightful and very good fun. I think it was a good idea to get some birthday celebrations in early this year as I haven't much felt like celebrating since then. Don't get me wrong, I'm not disillusioned or anxious about 31, I'm looking forward to a year in odd numbers, but frankly, between work and grief I am completely shattered. I slept until 3.30 yesterday and woke at half past one today so I'm glad the urge to celebrate en masse completely passed me by this year. 

Some of the decor at The Corner Room...

So much has happened in the last 12 months - some serious Life boxes have been ticked: incredible job, impending wedding and yet adulthood still feels relative. I'm glad not to be 30 anymore, with all its significance, but mortgages and babies are as foreign a concept to me as ever and I continue defiantly to understand grown up as the right to drink wine on a Tuesday and book an overseas holiday online using my own credit card. Each to their own I suppose but there was something quite serendipitous about my Wednesday morning Oval tube station philosophy lesson which I think sums up everything the last week and last year has thrown at me, from the mouth of Muhammad Ali no less:

And so another year begins. 

Exhaustion thy name is Full Time Work

I am zonked. I should be in bed right now and know I will regret it in the morning but I've just finished up the last of my NPG work and LB is cooking us a late light dinner while I fight the urge to rest my head on the keyboard.

If you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all.

Or in my case. If you can't say anything interesting....

Welcome to the last week of my life. My conversational skills are atrophying at a terrifying rate, thanks in no small part to the all-engrossing, co-dependent relationship I've developed with my computer. I'm struggling to finish sentences, think of words, articulate generally, which would be a bigger problem if I had anything of note to talk about apart from, well, the all-engrossing, co-dependent relationship I have developed with my computer. Thankfully LBB is fast becoming accustomed to my vagaries dressed as cute quirks. If I leave my glasses on I can almost get away with the mad, vacant professor look...

I am rather looking forward to having this finished in a couple of weeks time and regaining some semblance of a life. In the interests of full disclosure, the whole balance thing has never really been my forte but even I'm beginning to realise that all this solitary time in my head is sending me a bit loopy. I cannot wait for Cornwall this weekend. Some fresh air, some quaint English seaside towns and the chance to bust out the six 'mixed tape' CDs we made for our Mallorca road tripping back in the days before Lovely Boy earned his new moniker.

I have about 10,000 words to write before then and a job application to complete if I can manage to change brain gears in time. With any luck I'll have worked out how to re-activate my previously rather sophisticated out-loud speaking skills by Friday too. But one shouldn't hope for too much.

The post too big for a title

_________________________________________________

That there is the line I've drawn underneath all and everything that has happened in the last two months. There's been a litany of reasons for my fall into this most epic of writing black holes and I'd be lying if I said sitting down to write now, after two months of barely an email, is easy. It's oddly a physical challenge as much as a psychological one and pushing past all the rejection and self-confidence issues that have overwhelmed me lately feels like pushing over a wall of concrete in order to stagger up a really steep hill. But because I've drawn a line and because I'm now needing to write in order to move forward I'll neatly summise the two key events that kneecapped me and then, well, draw another line:

- First: an email from the editor at an unnamed art magazine telling me my writing style was "too broadsheet for the particular kind of art journalism they were looking for." With the kicker: "but I'm not saying no-one will ever publish your work." This is the first time I've written since receiving that email and I still feel sick and ashamed and a bit beaten.

- Then: a successful job application that lead to what even I, in my most pathetically self-doubting moments, know was a good interview.... only to then have to chase the HR department to confirm that I didn't get the job and for the kind of lame reason that says "Oh no,we never intended to hire you. We already had someone lined up for the job but, because that looks incredibly dodgy, we had to waste the time and efforts - oh and emotional energy - of a bunch of strangers to legitimate what we'd already decided before we put the job ad out." It doesn't matter this was only the second interview I've managed to get in nine months or the fact I was born to do this job.

_________________________________________________

I was destroyed. Flattened. Defeated. I may have even been sobbing in an alleyway off Kings Road with snot running down my face. I was then and still rather am now just a tad exhausted. But the beautiful thing about getting to emotional ground zero, particularly in the department of all things career, is that you can't then get any lower. And once you get used to the cold, hard, dark ground on which you lie, and once you exhaust the tears and once the deafening voices in your head that scream "YOU ARE A FAILURE" simmer to a low hum, well, that cold, hard, dark ground becomes cool and peaceful. And the solitary nature of this place becomes somewhere to retreat, a place to accept and just be, a place to consider new options, re-consider old ones and to just clock out for a while on the whole "what is the meaning of my life/what can I contribute to the world/do I have any value/will I ever earn more than £7 an hour" head fuck that has been my intellectual reality for way too long now.

With confidence broken, opportunities lost and hope missing like a favourite sentimental earring, well, it's a good time to just stop. And then, slowly, begin again. And/or go to Turkey.

__________________________________________________________

A looooong weekend

So I survived nannying - and so did the children. For a long weekend at the beginning of Spring I don't think any of us appreciated the pouring rain, the gale force winds or the hail but god has mercy - and these days it's called Nintendo.

By the time I got home on Monday afternoon it was all I could do to roll cadaverously off the sofa (freshly built) to eat the delicious meal LB had cooked for me, a mouth-watering Thai beef salad no less. It marked the end of an interesting couple of days, culinarily speaking. The long weekend was all about toasted sandwiches, burritos and packet cake mixes... an insulting low after Friday's personal triumph in the kitchen.

Cake aside, yes I really did bake one, I was mindlessly flicking through Bill Granger's Sydney Food cook book when I struck upon a ricotta and tomato tart and, perhaps deluded after all the Masterchef that LB has been making me watch lately, decided that making puff pastry from scratch couldn't be that hard...

And it wasn't.

Granted it was messy and absolutely it was more cal than low but honestly, there was puff to my pastry AND, more importantlyslashsurprisingly, it was delicious. My eyes were like saucers at the shock and even now I catch myself saying quietly to no-one in particular, "I made puff pastry. From scratch. And it was delicious." Or rather... "And it was delicious??" with that slightly raised intonation that suggests shock and utter disbelief. So to make packet mix brownies 12 hours later was a rather depressing come down as you might imagine, irrespective of their compelling edibility (ed: is that even a word?). My new theory is, if you're going to O.D. on calories, you have to at least earn the right to do so by making the bloody thing yourself. This theory obviously applies to everything except Snickers bars.

Not much else happened over the weekend and yesterday I was at the gallery before heading to the bar. A long day by anyone's definition but I didn't really mind. LB told me I should get a 9 to 5 job and I told him it wasn't the 9 to 5 I objected to so much as the Monday to Friday. Give me crap wages and long shifts any day as long as I can have the mornings to myself to sit on the sofa and write.

Coming home from the bar around 12.30, I was walking down the street when I spotted a fox, tearing through the rubbish bags in search of food. I stopped and tried to take a photo of him and as I did he stopped at looked at me, as if to say, rather indignantly, do you mind? But my crap camera failed to catch him in the darkness and so all I ended up with was this:

Best not give up any one of my day jobs just yet...

April? Did anyone see April?

... It must have run off with the end of March. Bloody hell it's been a while and if the year keeps up at this rate, never mind 30, I'll be 45 before I've even had time to get a haircut.

I had visions of myself, finally, having now the time and the headspace (and the internet connection), sitting down on my new sofa in my new house to catch up on the last six weeks. Only, well.... my sofa, delivered this morning.... currently looks like this:

Jeggings and visas and other such adventures

It's been an exhausting week. Also, a distracting week, a sad week, an anxious week and a quasi-productive week. And there is still the weekend to come.

To show for my week: an art review on my new website (yet to be revealed until all the bows and ribbons are c'est fini), a blood blister on my thumb (staple gun mishap at work, overzealous on the moss decoration. Long story), a new visa in my passport (no more waiting on that front and no need for a shotgun wedding [though thank you LB for the generous and tempting offer]), a plan to fly home to see my Nan next month and, of all the things I never thought this week would throw at me... an encounter with a pair of jeggings in the fitting room at work.

Now, anybody that knows me knows that apart from ugg boots worn as outside shoes the greatest fashion crime being committed today is jeggings. Jeans and leggings: ne'er the two should meet. They are wrong, they are ugly, they are just plain stupid. Seriously. Aaaaanyway, today at work we had a try-on session, working under the not silly assumption that if you know how the clothes fit you're all the better equipped to sell them. So far, so good until I walked into my allotted changing room to see my enemy hanging there, elasticised waist and all. On one level I rationed, maybe it was like smoking, you know, you smoke one cigarette once in your life, for curiosity's sake if nothing else just so you know what you're not missing out on.

But here's the thing, I've never once been tempted to smoke a cigarette and frankly I would argue that jeggings are just as bad for you, if not worse. I don't care how skinny they made me look... It certainly wasn't how I envisioned the week ending but it's marginally better than in tears I suppose. Just. Maybe.

LB and I are off to the V&A tomorrow afternoon to see the much hyped decode exhibition, which should be great fun, and then to a friend's birthday party tomorrow night. I look and feel totally bedraggled right now though - dark circles under my eyes and a strange and not-going-anywhere-fast collection of dyes and paints under my finger nails thanks to a fun few days at work helping the visual team set up the store (see previous tale re: moss and staple gun). I just want to sleep for a weekend.

This time next week Mum AND Sophie will be here and it can't come fast enough. I am in serious need of some mother-sister love and can't wait to see them. xx

Narcolepsy and a bowl of zucchini soup

It's been a while between posts - vast stretches of unpenetrated flatness on the emotional landscape that is my life post-dissertation and pre-whatever happens next. Mostly I have just been sleeping a lot.

Yesterday I started back at the art consultancy, where I'm interning two days a week until Christmas. I would be lying if I said I was excited about it (see: exhaustion) and getting home yesterday I sat on the couch and had myself a little cry. Not because I'm tired but because I feel a little bit lost and a whole lot muddled. Everytime I contemplate reading anything more taxing than Grazia, or attempt to find the will to see any one of the brilliant exhibitions on in London at the moment - oh Sophie Calle, oh Anish Kapoor - well, my narcoleptic tendencies prevail and instead I nap.

The Buda and The Pest

So Budapest was lots of fun. We got back yesterday afternoon after a couple of days wandering the city and trying not to freeze to death. Winter comes early to Eastern Europe people...


I was talking to my sister today, who has been to Budapest before - and she asked, had we been to the Museum of Terror? Umm. Nope. Did we get to the Communist Sculpture Park? Umm. No. What the hell did we do? A not unreasonable question I suppose and the answer is, well, not a huge amount, but enough, and it was good.

We were meant to arrive on Sunday lunchtime, thus the arse o'clock arrival at Heathrow for an 8.30am flight, but engine troubles before we'd even taxied to the runway left us stranded on the tarmac for a couple of hours until we were bussed unceremoniously to another plane. A few fellow passengers were muttering about compensation and impending stroppy letters but given the choice I think I'd rather send a thank you note for pre-emptively saving my life... but that's just me.

Arriving in Budapest, to be flummoxed by the new currency - I still have no idea how much those two days cost me - we caught a taxi into the city, Oliver speaking the international language of football with the taxi driver, whose English was limited to "Cesc Fabregas, oh yes", "Van Persie, oh yes" "Arshavin, yes, yes". Thank god he wasn't a Chelsea fan or we might never have got there.


Arriving at the apartment Ol's friend Anna-Lou had booked us all, and who was joining us on our mini-adventure, we were all completely buggered and there was a unanimous vote for snooze over sights before we ventured out in search of goulash for dinner.

Goulash ticked we had a reasonably early night and a very late morning before rugging up against the cold and taking to a bus tour. A) because we couldn't find the walking tour B) because it seemed an easy way to cover all the major landmarks with a minimum effort output and C) because it was frigging cold.


I'm not sure if it was the weather (depressing, despite the sunshine) or the exhaustion or just a generally dazed sense of "huh" that has been following me like an errant piece of toilet paper stuck unwittingly to my shoe since school ended, but I'm still not sure what I think of Budapest. It certainly has moments of great beauty and the Danube, which runs the gauntlet between such stunning buildings as the neo-gothic houses of parliament and the castle on the hill in Buda, is certainly amazing. But I don't know. For a city, and a country, that has such a fascinating history, it just seemed to lack the energy of other cities, like Berlin. But then maybe that was me missing the energy... Afternoon naps anyone? I would go back, but I'd want to go in Summer.


The bus trip though was great - informative, interesting and when it stopped at the Citadel for 20 minutes we had the opportunity to partake in some serious hot chocolate action. Think liquid chocolate doused in whipped cream. Low-cal it was not. Necessary it was.

That night we took advantage of the inclusive boat trip and more hot chocolate on board, we cruised the Danube trying not to freeze while gazing at the seriously beautiful architecture. You do have to love the English language translation on the commentaries though. "This beautiful bridge is very popular with people who try to kill themselves by jumping off." Cheery, no?


The next day, after the purchasing of some serious leg warmers to wear under my jeans and some obligatory jazz hands, we headed up to the castle to take in the view.


Broken record muchly but FUCK it was cold up there. Beautiful, but windy and biting and c-o-l-d. Every time we stopped for lunch I had to kick off my shoes, cross my legs and tuck my toes into the nooks of my knees to offset the stinging.

That afternoon the boys and Anna-Lou took off for the thermal spas. In a moment of absolute stupidity I forgot to pack my swimmers and what with being unemployed and already the owner of six pairs of swimming costumes, I refused to fork out 70 bucks for the privilege of cooking in a thermal spring with lots of chubby old Eastern European men wearing less lyrca than me. So I had a nap and the rest of Team Budapest, as big little bro had dubbed us, went off for a couple of hours.


That night we splashed out on a delicious last dinner - cocktails included - and a last dish of goulash before heading back to London yesterday. It's been such fun having the bro's here and their company and the absolute bullshit they talk has made me deeply homesick. Not quite six weeks until LB and I are Sydney-bound and I can't wait.

Can someone please tell me.....

WHY I thought it was a good idea to give up caffeine two weeks before my dissertation was due? I am so unbelievably tired - I even missed my tube stop today. With 2000 last words to write before the end of next week I may be forced to take it up again. But maybe just a little nap first?

Major(ca)ly excited

T-minus six sleeps until LB and I flee London for a week of self-imposed dissertation exile. In the Mediterranean no less.

I was about to say that Saturday cannot come fast enough but having just glanced casually to my left and spying the fat pile of notes and scribbled essay plans I strategically placed yesterday for maximum guilt impact, well, Saturday can come when it's ready - I need this week to write another 5,200 words. Give or take.


It was always the plan to put the whole bloody thing in a drawer for a week once I had the bulk of it written - a bit of breathing space, some time out, some distance... Yes, I know how it sounds and yes, my dissertation and I are involved and yes, we're going through a rough patch... More than anything it's just a chance really to recharge physically and intellectually without the aid of stimulants and a daily contribution to the profit margins of the local corner store and their Diet Coke supplier.

Last week was designated for all things writing and general genius. It turned out to be a week of soggy, foot-dragging exhaustion and academic ennui. Thank god for dramatic death scenes and overwrought acting on Australian afternoon soap operas. To be fair, I did spend an awful lot of time thinking last week, and the week before, trying to find those elusive signposts for my elusive argument. Fortunately the concentrated brain frying wasn't entirely in vain as I did have a couple of significant eureka moments - elusive flashes of intellectual clarity - that struck, somewhat oxymoronically, while battling noisy, shoving, hectic public transport experiences. Honestly, if the Circle Line had wi-fi I'd sit there all day.


Anyway, I have a lot to do this week, including buying a beach towel, but I can't wait for Saturday because I know that irrespective of how much Redbull I need to drink over the next five days (read: A LOT) and how utterly crap I feel by the end of it (read: VERY), I know it will be done. Because my dissertation does not have a passport and is not allowed to travel.

5,112

First drafts of introduction and chapter one? Tick.

It is an unbelievable relief to have this first big hurdle out of the way. The next big hurdle will be surviving the feedback from my tutor on Monday afternoon. But one thing at a time.

It's late here and I should probably head to bed - I've had a collective 8 or 9 hours sleep over the last few days trying to get this chapter written by today's deadline and I would be feeling elated that I got it done if I wasn't already busy feeling woolly headed and dopey.

Anyway - my capacity for clever has been drastically reduced, 5,112 words later so I am about to crawl into bed. Tomorrow is a new day and me, LB and my new "you finished your chapter, you look like shite, go on you deserve it" haircut are off to Brighton for the weekend and I am so excited a) to be getting out of London and b) to be leaving my computer behind. Am I done yet?

The Accidental Tourists

Despite thunderstorms and a serious SERIOUS case of The Tireds, the weekend just gone was one of unexpected delights - among them Star Trek and and an Oporto burger....

With a brain truly mushed from a week of exhausting over-thinking, and not even girl over-thinking, but thinking over-thinking it was always going to be a cruisy kind of weekend. Rain legitimated epic sloth sleep ins but yesterday (I still haven't gone to bed so it's technically still Monday....) was one of those funny London days where a casual adventure turns into an inadvertent trip through Tourist Town. I finally got to show LB the Columbia Rd Flower markets, which were a riot of colours and cupcakes and people wielding enormous bunches of peonies and bluebells and roses and sunflowers.


Shuffling our way through the reams of people we then meandered off in the direction of the Tate Modern. Robert Morris, a minimalist artist who's been around for decades, has re-created his bodyspacemotionthings installation that originally featured in the Tate Britain in the 1970s. This time around the naked women exist only in the requisite grainy black and white video documentation and the interactive adult's playground has been well and truly reclaimed by the children.


There is certainly something beguiling about the innocence and uncomplicated enthusiasm little humans have for new experiences and it was great fun witnessing all these little people enthralled with this silly thing called art.


Sadly us bigger kids didn't get as much out of it as we might have hoped but it was a lovely excuse to meander along the Southbank. We'd hopped off the bus out the front of St Paul's cathedral and dazzled by the reprieve of sunshine we decided to find ourselves a park for some lying and some reading of the papers. A shameful but totally delicious detour via Victoria for some nostalgic Oporto goodness and we headed off in the direction of St James's Park. Which inevitably led us past Buckingham Palace and the Pall Mall. Flags aplenty, tourists aplenty, there was a certain bonhomie to the whole spectacle and the ominous sky above only heightened the theatricality of it all.


We finally found ourselves a spot by the ducks in St James's Park and indulged in the Sunday papers until it started to spit with rain and we got a bit thirsty.


Heading towards Soho we couldn't fail to avoid Trafalgar Square, thus rounding out our accidental tour of some of London's major historical sites but it was quite fun to realise, yet again, just how casually cool this city is when it comes to those "oh my god I actually LIVE in London" moments. If ever there was going to be a montage of those moments, Sunday would have been it. Set to "Raindrops keep falling on my head" perhaps.

Off to Venice in a matter of hours. At least I'm packed. Mmmmm. Gelato and art. Bellisimo!